


In Threes

by piratesPencil



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mike Wheeler & Nancy Wheeler Bonding, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Psychic Abilities, Self-Discovery, Sibling Bonding, Will Byers Has Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratesPencil/pseuds/piratesPencil
Summary: How weird is it, that this thing with Jonathan and Steve has felt sorightbut also so isolating, like they’re the only three people in the world in such a strange and uncharted relationship… and yet here’sMikeof all people, essentially saying that he understands.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Will Byers/Eleven | Jane Hopper, Will Byers/Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 28
Kudos: 134





	1. Nancy

**Author's Note:**

> Set between season 2 and 3.

Nancy and Mike are watching TV when he asks her. It’s some dumb late-night horror movie, and neither of them are really paying attention to it. Nancy is painting her nails—a dark blue-black that Jonathan said he liked last time she wore it—and Mike is painting some tiny figurines for one of his roleplaying campaigns or something.

She almost doesn’t hear him when he asks, she’s so zoned out. It takes her a second to realize what he’s asked, and then her head snaps up.

“What did you say?”

“I _said,_ are you dating Jonathan _and_ Steve?”

She scoffs awkwardly and shakes her head, looking back down at her nails. “What? No. What kind of question is that? I’m dating Jonathan now. You know that.”

“Okay, sure,” Mike says, sounding entirely unconvinced. “So why did Dustin see you making out with Steve behind the movie theater last night?”

“What?” she shouts, looking back up at Mike. “Why was Dustin spying on us?”

“He wasn’t _spying_ on you,” Mike says. “It’s not his fault he happened to be biking that way and you guys were just _doing it_ out in the open.”

“We were not _doing it_ ,” Nancy protests. She realizes now that it’s too late to backtrack and say that she _wasn’t_ kissing Steve, so she says, “And we weren’t _making out_. He gave me a quick kiss. You know. Like a friend thing.”

“A _friend thing_?” Mike rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Nancy says. She stands up and starts collecting her nail stuff. “You’ll get it when you’re older.”

“Sureee,” Mike says. “When I’m older and _cheating on my boyfriends._ ”

“I’m not cheating on them!” Nancy shouts. “It’s just… it’s complicated. Shut up.”

Mike raises his eyebrows. “So you _are_ dating both of them.”

“I told you to shut up.”

She has everything shoved back in her makeup bag now, and her nails are still kind of wet, but she’s getting ready to make a quick getaway because she is _not_ continuing this conversation with her kid brother.

“Wait!” Mike says, when she’s almost out of the room. “Wait.”

He sounds so genuine that she actually does wait.

“I don’t… I wasn’t trying to mess with you,” Mike says. He glances at the TV and then back at her again, and he looks… nervous?

She pauses in the doorway.

“I just… I actually want to know,” Mike says. “Are you dating both of them?”

And this isn’t little-shit Mike. This isn’t the version of her little brother who’s just trying to get a rise out of her. This is _genuine_ Mike, the Mike who cried over Will, and then over Eleven, the Mike who asked her what he should wear to the Snow Ball, the Mike who’s more sensitive and mature than she gives him credit for.

“Um…” What does she say to this version of Mike? How does she explain this to her little brother? _Should_ she explain this to her little brother? “Yes?”

Mike’s eyes widen. For a terrifying second, she thinks he’s going to laugh at her, that she misjudged him and he’s _totally_ messing with her.

“But if you tell Mom and Dad I’ll _kill_ you,” she says quickly.

“What? No. No, I won’t tell them,” Mike says, shaking his head. “I just… um… that’s cool, Nancy. Are they… they both know, right?”

“Yes! Yes. They know. I told you, I’m not cheating on them.”

“Good,” Mike says, and he sounds like he means it.

Nancy doesn’t really know where this conversation is going, but she doesn’t want to run away from it now. She leaves the doorway to come sit on the couch next to Mike again, setting down her makeup bag beside his abandoned mini figurines.

“Why… did you want to know?” she asks slowly.

Mike shrugs. “I was just curious. You know. Because Dustin saw you two, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t, like, cheating on Will’s brother. Jonathan is cool, he wouldn’t deserve that.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. “He is cool.”

“So, um…” Mike starts picking at a loose seam on the edge of the couch, not quite looking at her, and she suspects that _just curious_ isn’t all there is to this conversation.

She’s kind of just as nervous about this conversation as Mike seems to be, though. She’s never talked to anyone about this other than Steve and Jonathan. If Barb were still around, she would have told her, though she doesn’t know how Barb would feel about this. Actually, she _does_ know how Barb would feel about this—Barb would _hate_ this. Dating Steve Harrington _and_ Jonathan Byers? At the _same time_? Barb would lose her shit.

And that makes Nancy feel kind of bad about it. Is she betraying Barb, in a way?

But maybe Barb would understand. Maybe if she understood how Nancy felt about them. Maybe she would.

She hopes she would.

“Um, Nancy?”

“What?”

Right. Mike. She definitely stopped paying attention for a second there.

“Um… Are Jonathan and Steve… you know… dating, too?”

And there it is. The part she really didn’t want to have to explain, the part she really didn’t think Mike would ask about but was afraid he would. Telling her little brother that she happens to be dating two guys at once isn’t the _craziest_ thing—lots of people date around in high school, it’s fine.

But it’s more than that. Nancy isn’t stringing along two boys. Nancy is dating two boys, and those two boys are also dating each other.

She doesn’t know what to say. What is she supposed to say? The fact that Jonathan and Steve are dating is even more of a secret than the fact that Nancy and Steve are still dating. They don’t even really say it out loud to _each other_. It’s not something they ever planned on—but when Nancy and Jonathan started dating, Nancy couldn’t really give up on Steve… and neither could Jonathan.

 _Just hanging out_ together turned into so much more, so quickly, and Nancy thinks it might be a betrayal of their trust, of their privacy, to tell Mike the truth.

Maybe her silence is answer enough, though, because Mike’s eyes widen the longer she doesn’t answer.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says finally, when it becomes pretty clear that she won’t. “Just… let’s say… if they _were_ dating each other… would you be cool with that?”

“Of course,” Nancy says, before she even really has time to think about how loaded that question is. “Of course it’s okay… would be okay… if they were dating each other. Of course.”

She didn’t even realize that Mike was so tense until he relaxes, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize what he’s really asking her.

“Mike, are you…”

“I’m not saying I’m gay or anything!” he says quickly. “I like Eleven! You know I do.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. “Of course.”

“But, um… I just wondered if it was, you know, possible to like… more than one person. Or even to, like, date… more than one person.”

“It’s definitely possible,” Nancy says. How weird is it, that this thing with Jonathan and Steve has felt so _right_ but also so isolating, like they’re the only three people in the world in such a strange and uncharted relationship… and yet here’s _Mike_ of all people, essentially saying that he understands.

“Is it… Will?” she asks softly. It might be overstepping a boundary, to ask him so outright, even if she’s pretty sure she knows.

For a second it looks like Mike’s going to scoff and deny it, but then he ducks his head and whispers, “Yeah.”

“Byers boys, huh?” Nancy says, and Mike actually laughs.

“I just… I don’t know. I guess at some point I just realized that I like Will… not the same way that I like Dustin and Lucas and Max. I like him… more like I like Eleven. And I think she likes him, too. They… _understand_ each other in a way that the rest of us can’t. And I feel like it should make me jealous, but instead it makes me… happy? That these two people I like, like each other so much.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Nancy says, and he’s explained it exactly, hasn’t he? Better than she ever could. She loves Jonathan, and she loves Steve, and more than anything she loves that they love _each other_ just as much as they love her.

Mike looks up from the loose thread in the couch and gives her a crooked smile.

“Thanks, Nancy,” he says.

“Thanks yourself,” Nancy says, leaning over to bump shoulders with him.

“For what?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says. “For being cool about this. For understanding.”

Mike nods. “Yeah,” he says. “You, too.”


	2. Mike

Will is hunched over his desk, pencil in hand, chipping away at a sketch of a dragon twining its long body around a scorched tree. For a second Mike just watches him work. Mike has always liked watching Will draw—he’s so good at it, and when he’s really into it, it’s one of the only times he looks truly relaxed.

Will must notice him watching, though, because after a few seconds he drops his pencil and turns around to see Mike.

“Oh, hey,” he says. “Did my mom let you in?”

“Uh, Jonathan did. I think your mom is making dinner, but she said hi to me from the kitchen.”

Will nods.

Mike could have just asked Jonathan to grab Will from his room. It’s Saturday night and they’re heading out to meet up with the others at the arcade. There’s no reason Mike needed to come in, but… he likes these moments. Just him and Will in Will’s room, hanging out.

So he sits down at the end of Will’s bed and pulls his feet up, settling in, if only for a few minutes.

“What are you working on?” he asks, nodding at the drawing.

“Oh, this?” Will runs a hand over the page, brushing away some eraser dust. Mike notices that the sketchbook Will’s using is one that Mike bought him for his birthday last year, and it makes Mike feel stupidly warm and tingly inside. “Just a doodle.”

“A _doodle_?” Mike says. He shakes his head. “You don’t _do_ just doodles, Will. My art is worse than Holly’s. Yours is like… professional.”

Will laughs and ducks his head. Mike could swear that he actually _blushes_ at the compliment, and that doesn’t do anything to make the warm and tingly feeling go away.

“Seriously,” Mike says, because he wants to keep making Will blush. “You could probably make money with your art. Like, sell it. I bet you could be a comic book artist!”

“I wish,” Will says. He sighs and then stands up, closing the cover of the sketchbook. “I’ll probably just end up, I don’t know, working at the general store for the rest of my life like my mom.”

“What? Don’t say that,” Mike says. He doesn’t stand up. He’s not ready to go yet, not quite. “You’re gonna do _awesome_ things with your life.”

Will shrugs. “My mom’s happy.”

“Is she?” Mike says, raising an eyebrow.

“Hey!” Will snaps. “Don’t insult my mom.”

Okay, that’s fair. Mike loves Will’s mom, he really does.

“Okay, okay, that’s not what I meant,” Mike says.

Will is moving towards his bedroom door now, so Mike has to get up. He does so reluctantly. He doesn’t know _what_ he was hoping would happen in Will’s room, but he still feels like he missed out on… something.

“I know,” Will says. “It’s okay.”

Mike wants to say more, wants to tell Will that he’s the best of all of them, the most creative, the strongest, the bravest. Will and Eleven, both of them, they’re so… _much_. Mike is nothing.

Most of the time, Mike feels like he doesn’t exist outside of them. Who is Mike Wheeler, other than Will’s best friend and Eleven’s boyfriend? He’s a side character in both of their lives, and it should make him mad, but if he’s being honest with himself, he loves it.

He wants to keep hyping Will up, but he knows Will will just keep brushing off the compliments, so he follows Will to the front door in silence.

Jonathan is sitting in the living room, fiddling with his camera. He looks up as Will and Mike cross through the room, and Mike gives him a quick wave.

It’s weird, seeing Jonathan, now that Mike knows what he does about Nancy’s three-way relationship. Before, Jonathan was just Nancy’s boyfriend and Will’s brother. A guy he kind of knew, had kind of known for years, but not someone he ever really thought about.

Now he can’t stop thinking about Jonathan and Steve. Until now, Mike had assumed he didn’t know a single gay person. He knew gay people existed, of course, but in a sort of vague, unreal way. There were probably gay people in, like, New York, or California, but not in Hawkins, Indiana.

But apparently Jonathan and Steve have been here the whole time, and although Nancy didn’t _exactly_ tell him they were dating each other… Mike could read between the lines.

It’s not just knowing that Jonathan and Steve are gay. (Well, not gay. They’re both dating Nancy, too. Bisexual? Mike has heard that word before. He desperately wants to do some more research about all… _this_ … but he doesn’t want someone to come across him scanning the library shelves for books on… what? Gay stuff? What would he even look for?)

But it’s not just that. It’s that, if Jonathan and Steve have been gay (bisexual, something) this whole time and Mike never knew it, how many _other_ people does Mike know who are gay?

And, most important of all… Is Will, maybe, gay? Or bisexual?

Sure, people have called Will queer before. It was one of the school bullies’ favourite go-tos for Will, before all the zombie-boy stuff. Because Will is quiet and soft-spoken and gentle and likes art. But Mike knows that none of that stuff makes Will gay—it just makes Will _Will_.

So is it bad, that Mike hopes the bullies were right?

But it’s different. The bullies called Will gay because they thought it was a bad thing, because they wanted Will to feel uncomfortable and ashamed.

Mike doesn’t think it would be bad if Will were gay. He thinks it would be great. It would be absolutely _fantastic_ if Will wanted to kiss him even half as much as he wants to kiss Will.

“Um, Mike?”

Will is giving him a weird look, and for a second Mike thinks that he said that he wants to kiss Will _out loud_.

But then he realizes that he’s been dazedly standing in the doorway for way too long, and Will is already outside, straddling his bike.

“Oh, um, coming,” Mike says, and he races down the steps and over to his bike.

“You okay?” Will asks, as they take off up the Byers’ driveway.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Mike says. “Just distracted.”

“Is it about Eleven?” Will asks.

“What? Why would it be about Eleven?”

Will shrugs. “I don’t know. But whenever Jonathan is acting weird, it’s usually because he’s thinking about Nancy.”

 _Or maybe about Steve_ , Mike wants to say. He wants to tell Will what he learned about Nancy and her boyfriends _so badly_ , but it’s one thing for Nancy to sort of, kind of out Jonathan and Steve to him. It would be something else entirely for Mike to straight up out Jonathan to his brother, no matter how much he wants to talk to Will about it.

Mike _knows_ that Will wouldn’t hate his brother for being gay. Or at least, he’s like… _ninety_ percent sure that Will would be cool with it. But it’s still not Mike’s place to tell Will about Jonathan’s business, he knows that.

 _You could tell him that_ you’re _queer_ , a little voice in the back of Mike’s head says, and it makes his stomach do a weird flip to think those words.

And he could. He could tell Will. And Will—kind Will, gentle Will, Will who _gets_ him like no one else does—Will would almost definitely be cool with it.

But what if Will _isn’t_ cool with it? There’s no way Mike could handle that. If Will hated him he might actually die.

And what if Will _is_ cool with it, but he wants to know how Mike knows he’s queer? How can Mike tell him the truth— _every time I look at you I wish I could hold your hand the way I hold El’s._

And then there’s El. Even if he wanted to tell Will how he feels, he can’t. He can’t do that to El. It doesn’t matter if Nancy has somehow hit the dating jackpot—just because Jonathan and Steve are cool with this whole three-way dating thing doesn’t mean that Eleven would be cool with it, and Mike would never in a million years do anything to hurt El’s feelings.

Because he loves her, too. He really does. That’s why he finally asked Nancy the thing he’d been thinking about for months. Because he wanted to know that he wasn’t crazy, that it was possible to love two people so much, so equally. His crush on Will—because that’s what it is, isn’t it, a full-blown, absolute crush—doesn’t make him like Eleven any less.

God, how did Nancy get so lucky? How did it even happen for her? Mike should have asked for more details. How did Nancy go from liking two people to dating them both?

And how can he do that too?


	3. Eleven

Eleven doesn’t know how to feel about Will.

Will _feels_ like the upside down. And she knows it’s not his fault, but he _does_ , and it took her a long time to get used to that, to get used to the cold, dark feeling that still clings to him after everything.

He also feels like jealousy, red hot and itchy under her skin. Not all the time, but sometimes, when Mike looks at Will, Eleven remembers the illogical rage that filled her that first time she saw Mike and Max in the school gym together.

She realizes, now, that she was very wrong about Mike and Max. Eleven doesn’t think that Mike and Max _hate_ each other, but they don’t seem to like each other very much. And Max likes Lucas— _like_ likes him, which is a concept that Eleven is still kind of learning about.

Dating and kissing and _like_ liking. It’s all very confusing, but she’s pretty sure that she definitely _like_ likes Mike. And she knows that Mike _like_ likes her—he’s told her before, in his awkward, endearing way.

But the thing is, Eleven is pretty sure that Mike _like_ likes Will, too.

He’s never told her that he does, but she spends a lot of time just _watching_ people—especially Mike. People are so strange and confusing and fascinating, and Eleven feels like she still has a lot of work to do to just learn how to _be_ a person. Just _watching_ people seems to be the best way to learn.

So. She spends a lot of time watching them. And the more time she spends watching people, the more things she notices.

Like the way Mike’s eyes linger on Will more than they linger on their other friends. Mike is grumpy a lot of the time—Hopper always says that Eleven is grumpy, but Eleven thinks that Mike is at _least_ twice as grumpy as her.

But he’s never grumpy _with_ her. He’s grumpy with his parents, with his sister, even with his friends, but never with her.

And never with Will.

There’s a softer, less grumpy version of Mike that only really seems to come out around Eleven and Will, and it’s Eleven’s favourite version of Mike. It’s the version that’s gentler and quieter, but also sometimes more nervous, more rambly. It’s the version of Mike who takes her hand in his sweaty palm and kisses her lightly, quickly, like he’s afraid she might pull away even though he knows she won’t.

It’s the version of Mike who will just _sit_ with her when she needs to talk, or when she just needs to be quiet, and to be held.

She loves that Mike, and sometimes it sets her on fire to see him being that version of Mike with Will.

But she also, kind of, _likes it_.

The first time she caught herself watching Mike and Will together and actually being _happy_ about it, she didn’t know what to do with herself.

Why did it make her so happy, to see Mike soft and smiley with Will? Shouldn’t she hate it? Shouldn’t she be _jealous_?

Maybe it’s just because she likes that version of Mike so much that she’s just happy to see it, no matter why it comes out.

Or maybe it’s because she kind of _like_ likes Will, too.

She definitely didn’t _like_ like him at first, though. She barely regular-liked him.

After she left Kali, once she came back to Hawkins and closed the gate, she just wanted her friends. Just Mike, Lucas and Dustin. No Max, no Will. Just the friends she made a year ago and had spent so, so long waiting for.

But Max and Will were _there_ whether she liked it or not. And Steve, and Nancy, and Jonathan. So many _people_ , always around, always together, too many _friends_.

At first, Eleven hated it. She refused to speak to any of them, crossed her arms and closed herself off whenever she wasn’t alone with Mike or Lucas or Dustin.

But she learned. She learned to tolerate the others, and then to maybe even like them a little bit.

But not Will. Will was too dark, too cold, too much like the place that Eleven had somehow unleashed on the world, too much like the one thing that Eleven never wanted to think about again.

Most of the time, she could barely even stand to look at him.

But then, one summer day, months after Eleven came back to Hawkins, months of avoiding Will’s presence as much as she could, Will turns to her and asks, “Why do you hate me?”

They’re lying on the grass in Mike’s backyard. It’s mid-summer and the air is heavy and warm. It smells like fresh grass and hot asphalt, smells that Eleven is still learning to put names to after a lifetime spent inside a lab.

She and Mike and Will are lying in a loose circle on the grass, their heads close together. She can hear Mike breathing softly and evenly—he fell asleep a little while ago, and she was on the verge of falling asleep in the sleepy summer afternoon when Will spoke up.

“Hate you?” she repeats, tilting her head so she can look at Will.

“Yeah,” Will says softly. “I know you do.”

“Do not,” Eleven says sourly.

“Yes, you do,” Will says. He doesn’t say it meanly or frustratedly. He just states it, just a fact, and the way he’s so calm about it makes Eleven’s blood boil.

“Do _not_ ,” she repeats.

“Yes you do,” Will repeats back to her.

She sits up abruptly and scowls down at him.

“Do _not_ ,” she says, louder this time.

“Shh,” Will says. He sits up too, more slowly and deliberately than her. “You’ll wake him up.”

Eleven almost wants to wake Mike up on purpose just to spite Will, but she takes one look at Mike’s soft, sleepy face and she knows that she can’t.

Damn Will, using her one weakness against her. He knows that she’ll never do anything to hurt Mike, or even to wake him up from a nice nap.

“ _You_ be quiet,” she snaps back, just to be contrary.

He laughs lightly. “I _am_ being quiet.”

“Don’t laugh at me!”

She knows she’s being bratty­— _bratty_ , another one of Hopper’s favourite words—but she doesn’t care. Everything about Will gets her hackles up, makes her feel like a cornered dog.

She almost wants to wake Mike up so that she doesn’t have to be alone with Will.

“I’m not laughing at you,” Will says, softly, and he leans towards her, and _nope_ , nope, that’s _too close_.

She doesn’t even really think about it. It’s a defense mechanism, like the cornered dog biting at the thing that’s cornering it. Between one second and the next, there’s a big, smooth stone hanging in the air between them, plucked out of the Wheelers’ flower bed and flung at Will’s head.

Except it doesn’t hit Will’s head. It’s just _hanging_ there, in the air between them, and Eleven is so shocked that she freezes.

And then she looks up, and she sees Will looking at the floating stone between them, his brows furrowed in concentration.

And then she sees the tiniest trickle of blood dripping from his nose.

She shrieks and stumbles backwards away from him. Mike blinks awake at the sound of her scream, sitting up slowly.

“What’s happen—” He stops.

Will loses his concentration as Mike wakes up, and the stone drops to the grass with a faint thud. But Mike sees it before it hits the ground, and he sees the trickle of blood before Will has a chance to wipe it away with the back of his hand.

“What the _fuck_?” Mike shouts.

“It’s nothing!” Will says quickly. “Eleven was just… showing me a cool trick.”

“Eleven?” Mike says, turning to her. “What happened?”

She doesn’t want to tell Mike that she very nearly hurled a rock at Will’s head. That she _would_ have hurled it at his head if he hadn’t _stopped it with his mind._

But _friends don’t lie_ , so she says, “Will made a rock float.” It’s not a _lie_ to not tell the whole story.

“You have telekinesis too?” Mike shouts, turning back to Will.

Will shrugs weakly. “Apparently?”

“And _when_ were you going to tell me this?”

“I didn’t know until just now!” Will says. “The rock was flying at me and I just _stopped it_.”

Mike narrows his eyes. “Why was the rock flying at you?”

“Uh…” Will and Eleven lock eyes, and Eleven silently _begs_ Will not to tell Mike what happened. “No reason.”

Mike looks between Will and Eleven a few times, suspicious, and then says, “I can’t believe you guys are in secret psychic cahoots without me.”

“I’m not in _cahoots_ with him,” Eleven says quickly, even though she’s not entirely sure what cahoots are.

“Can you do other stuff?” Mike asks, turning back to Will. “Like, can you do Eleven’s bath thing?”

“I don’t know, Mike,” Will says, and now Will looks properly freaked out, and for the first time, Eleven actually feels bad for him.

He’s scary and creepy and reminds Eleven of everything she doesn’t like, but she realizes now that he’s also probably _scared_. She probably reminds _him_ of everything he doesn’t like. She hates everything about the upside down, but Will was actually _stuck_ in there for days, and then he had it living inside of him for a whole year.

Something changes after that day in Mike’s backyard. She still hates the cold, dark aura that surrounds Will, but she doesn’t blame him so much for it. She stops avoiding Will and then, at some point, starts seeking him out. It’s strange and scary but also somehow comforting, to think that he’s so much like her, in so many ways.


	4. Will

“Hey, Eleven?”

Eleven is sitting on top of a mossy boulder at the edge of the creek, kicking her bare toes in the water. The others—Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Max—are splashing around in the water a little ways away, jumping on each other and seeing who can stay underwater the longest. Will and Eleven aren’t big fans of swimming, though.

It’s early spring and the water is still cold, and Will has hated the cold ever since the whole shadow monster incident. He suspects that Eleven hates the water because it reminds her too much of _the bath_. He’s never heard Eleven talk about the bath, but Mike has told Will about it. Mike has told Will as much as he can remember about the week when Will was in the upside down—everything about Eleven, everything she did for him.

Will wishes there was a way for him to tell Eleven how thankful he is for her. For how she helped save him, but also for how much she means to Mike. Eleven makes Mike so _happy_ , and seeing Mike so happy makes Will happy.

He’s told Eleven _thank you_ before, but he feels like that doesn’t quite cover it.

Anyways, the point is, while their friends are splashing around topless in the icy creek, he and Eleven are sitting in soft beams of sunlight on the rocky shore. They’ve both been mostly quiet—neither of them are very talkative people, and Will thinks that’s why they get along so well—but he can’t hold his question in any more. He’s been thinking about it all week, or maybe even longer. He can’t remember exactly when Mike started acting so weird.

“Eleven?” he repeats, because she didn’t seem to hear him the first time. Eleven tends to get lost in her own head even more than he does, but he doesn’t mind. He gets lots in his own brain all the time, and he doesn’t have half the crazy psychic stuff to deal with that Eleven does.

She tilts her head to look at him, resting her cheek on one raised knee. “Will?” she replies.

“Has Mike been acting… weird? Lately?” Will asks.

Eleven furrows her brow. “Weird?”

“Yeah,” Will says. “You know… different. Distracted, I guess?”

Eleven frowns. “Distracted…” She has a faraway look, like she’s thinking really hard about it, and Will stays quiet, letting her think.

Will wishes he could know what goes on in Eleven’s mind. She’s the most interesting person he’s ever met—he feels like there are probably entire universes worth of knowledge inside her brain, but she only shares the tiniest fraction of herself with them. He suspects that she shares a little bit more of herself with Mike, and Will wishes he could see that version of her. Every time he gets a little glimpse into the world that is Eleven he feels like he’s won a prize.

Maybe it’s some kind of weird psychic upside down connection between them, or maybe it’s just because Will thinks she’s cool. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. But he wants to know her better, and he hopes that someday he’ll get that chance.

In the meantime, they can talk about Mike.

“Yes,” Eleven finally says. “Distracted. Mike has been… distracted lately. Weird.”

Will nods. “Okay. I’m glad it’s not just me. Do you think he’s… okay?”

Eleven purses her lips and thinks for a second. “Yes,” she finally says. “I think he’s okay. He’s not sad. Just… distracted.”

“Yeah,” Will says, nodding. “That’s what I thought, too. You don’t know why he’s… distracted, do you?”

Eleven shakes her head. “Do you?”

“Me?” Will says. “Why would I know? You’re his girlfriend.”

“You’re his best friend,” Eleven counters.

Will shrugs and ducks his head. He wouldn’t want Dustin or Lucas to hear Eleven say that. He knows Mike cares about them just as much as he cares about him. They’ve been over this—they’re _all_ each other’s best friends, no picking favourites.

But Will would be lying if he said that it didn’t make him at least a little bit happy to hear Eleven call him Mike’s best friend. And if Will is being _totally_ honest with himself, he does play favourites with his friends, just a little bit. Mike has always been… special, to him.

He doesn’t know exactly why, or how, and he wouldn’t tell the others. But he’s always turned to Mike first when he needs someone to talk to, always felt like Mike understood him best, like he wanted to impress Mike the most.

Will knows a lot about Mike. They’ve been friends for years, and Mike tells Will everything. So it’s not like with Eleven. With Eleven, Will hardly knows anything at all, but he wants to know everything.

With Mike, Will already knows almost everything there is to know. And yet he still wants _more_ —he doesn’t even know exactly what that means, but he knows that he wants _more_ of Mike, just like he wants more of Eleven.

And maybe that’s why Mike’s weird mood is bothering him so much. He usually feels like he knows everything about Mike, but all of a sudden, he doesn’t understand him, can’t get a read on him, doesn’t understand why he’s acting so _weird_ lately.

He was worried that he was just losing him, that maybe now that they’re older and Mike has a girlfriend, Will isn’t the person he turns to anymore. And it scared Will, a little bit. To think that he might be losing Mike.

But if Eleven doesn’t know why Mike is being weird, either… Well, that makes Will feel a little bit better. If even Mike’s _girlfriend_ doesn’t know what’s up, then it’s probably something that _nobody_ knows.

It’s definitely selfish of him, but Will doesn’t want other people to know things about Mike that he doesn’t know.

“Are you guys just gonna sit here all day?”

Will starts at the sound of Mike’s voice. He and Eleven have, apparently, both drifted off with their thoughts again, because Mike surprises them both by popping his head out of the water a few feet away from them.

“Yes,” Eleven says. She pulls her feet up out of the water and wraps her arms around her legs.

“Aww,” Mike says, but he doesn’t push her. He turns to Will instead and asks, “You, too?”

Will nods. “Me, too,” he says. He shrugs apologetically and adds, “It’s too cold.”

And because it’s Mike, he doesn’t have to explain. Mike gets it. Mike always gets it.

He just nods, and then he stands up in the shallow creek and starts climbing up to shore.

“You don’t have to get out,” Will says quickly. “It’s fine. You guys seemed like you were having fun.”

Mike shrugs. “We were,” he says. “But now I want to hang out with you guys.”

And he smiles that bright, toothy smile that makes Will’s heart beat a little faster in his chest.

He looks away quickly, because he can’t let himself think like that. This is Mike. This is his best friend. This is his best friend who has a girlfriend, who’s a _boy_ , who—

“Holy shit, it is cold,” Mike says, interrupting Will’s internal panic once again. He’s sitting on the rocky shore beside Will and shivering, his hair and shorts absolutely dripping.

“That’s because you’re all wet,” Will says, gently teasing, but he’s already slipping his thin coat off to give it to Mike.

Eleven, apparently, has the same idea, because at almost the exact same moment, Will holds his coat out to Mike and Eleven holds her sweater out to him, too.

Mike looks between them for a bewildered second and then laughs.

“I don’t deserve you two,” he says, accepting both.

Will should look away. He shouldn’t watch the way the droplets of water slide down Mike’s bare torso as he lifts his arms to pull on Eleven’s sweater, shouldn’t watch the way his muscles shift under his pale skin. He shouldn’t feel that tightness in his throat at the sight of Mike pulling on his coat over Eleven’s sweater, shouldn’t feel so satisfied at the sight of Mike, wet and wild-haired, bundled up in their clothes.

But he does. He does, and Mike looks over at him as he pulls on his coat, and he smiles again, and Will thinks that maybe Mike knows _exactly_ what Will is thinking.

And it should freak him out, but instead, he finds himself really, _really_ hoping that Mike knows.

“So messy,” Eleven says, leaning over to ruffle Mike’s wet hair.

“Hey!” Mike says, dodging her hand. “You’re one to talk.”

He reaches up to flick at her wild curls, and she shrieks a laugh and ducks away from him, and then he’s climbing up onto the rock next to her to pull her into his arms, laughing.

And, watching them, Will is equal parts jealous and enamoured. He doesn’t know what to do with these feelings, wishes he could climb up onto that rock with them, wishes he had the _courage_ to climb up there with them, because somehow he’s almost sure they would let him.

But he’s not brave, he’s not brave at all, so instead he looks away, and goes back to watching Dustin and Lucas and Max splashing around in the creek, and pretends that Mike and Eleven aren’t holding each other right beside him.


	5. Three

They’re having a sleepover in Mike’s basement when he asks them.

It’s too dark in the basement to see the clock on the wall, but Mike knows it’s way after midnight. They stayed up eating pizza and candy and playing a truly _epic_ campaign that Mike spent all month preparing for them. He can’t believe there was a time when they played without Max and Eleven—a five-player campaign is _much_ more exciting than their old three-player ones.

They finally went to bed when Dustin pretty much fell asleep at the table. The rest of them stayed up chatting in their sleeping bags for a while longer, but they slowly dropped off—after Dustin it was Max, then Lucas. Will and Eleven, lying on either side of him, are both quiet now, but they’re always quiet. Mike can tell that they’re both still awake.

“Hey,” he says, softly, so he doesn’t wake up the other three. “Did you know that Nancy is dating Jonathan _and_ Steve?”

He decided, after thinking it over for _weeks_ , that it’s okay to tell them this. He won’t tell them that Jonathan and Steve are dating each other—Jonathan can tell Will that if and when he wants to.

But Mike figures it’s safe to tell them this much. He wants to tell them this much. He feels like he _has_ to tell them this much or he’s going to _explode._

There’s a brief silence, and then Will says, “I know.”

“ _What_?” Mike says. He rolls over so he can look at Will. “You know? How long have you known?”

Will shrugs, his sleeping bag shifting under his shoulders. “I don’t know. For a while. It’s not like Jonathan told me… I just kind of guessed. They’re always together, all three of them, and I could just… tell.”

Mike doesn’t know if Will means he can _tell_ in a normal way, or in the sort-of-psychic way that Will seems to know a lot of things now. Their older siblings’ dating lives don’t _seem_ to be in the same upside down realm of things that Will _usually_ psychically knows about, but who knows. Maybe it’s all connected in some freaky paranormal way.

“They’re boyfriend and girlfriend and… boyfriend?” El asks softly, and Mike rolls over to look at her now.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “Boyfriend and girlfriend and boyfriend.”

It’s so few words but it means so _much_ , which is always how Eleven speaks. Mike will forever be in awe of the way she absolutely cuts through all the bullshit that everyone else is always spewing and just say exactly what she’s thinking, so plainly that it sometimes loops back around to being cryptic.

“Didn’t know you could be… boyfriend and girlfriend and boyfriend,” Eleven says.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “Me neither. But I asked Nancy and she said… yeah. They’re all dating, and they’re all okay with it. She’s not cheating on either of them.”

“I think Jonathan and Steve are dating, too,” Will says, and it’s such a relief that Will says it, that Mike doesn’t have to be the one to beat around that bush.

“Nancy didn’t say,” Mike says, just to cover his bases. “But yeah. Yeah, I think, maybe.”

“Boyfriend and boyfriend,” El muses.

“Yeah. Sometimes boys date other boys, and girls date other girls,” Mike says.

“I know,” Eleven says, and Mike’s not sure exactly how she knows. Although, to be fair, until relatively recently, Eleven probably didn’t even know that girls date boys. It makes sense that boys dating boys would make just as much sense to her as girls dating boys.

Mike wishes everyone thought that way.

“At first, I kind of thought Nancy and Steve were just… messing with Jonathan,” Will says softly. “I don’t… I mean, he’s great. I love him. But he’s never, you know… had a lot of friends. And it kind of seemed too good to be true, him all of a sudden having a cool girlfriend and hanging out with _Steve Harrington._ So I kind of thought, you know, that it _was_ too good to be true, that Nancy and Steve were still dating each other and, I guess, just pulling some elaborate prank on my brother.”

“Nancy wouldn’t do that,” Mike says. His sister might be unbearably annoying sometimes, but he really doesn’t think she’d be cruel enough to mess with Jonathan like that. And now that he knows Steve Harrington better, he really doesn’t think that Steve would, either.

“I know,” Will says. “I realized that, after a while. That they were _both_ genuinely happy with Jonathan.”

“Yeah,” Mike says.

And he doesn’t know what to say after that. He thought that Will and Eleven might be more… _shocked_ than this. That he’d have to explain to them what it meant, for Nancy to have two boyfriends.

That maybe he could find a way to go from explaining that to telling them… telling them…

He didn’t let himself think too far ahead, so he doesn’t know exactly _what_ he wanted to tell them, but now he feels like he’s losing his chance.

And then Eleven, beautiful, perfect Eleven, says, “I’m… happy with both of _you_.”

And Mike’s heart leaps up into his throat. He shouldn’t get such a high from hearing that—he and El are _dating_ , it’s not like she hasn’t said that she’s happy with him before.

But it’s that extra word in there— _both_. That’s what sets Mike’s heart racing.

“Yeah,” Mike says softly, before he loses his chance, before he loses his nerve. “I’m happy with both of you, too.”

And Will could ignore it. He doesn’t have to say it back. He could easily say _that’s nice_ , or nothing at all.

But, softly, into the darkness of the basement, he says, “Me, too. I’m happy with both of you, too.”

It’s not a declaration of love. It’s barely anything at all, and yet it’s _so much_. It’s just like Eleven, just like Will. They’re both so quiet but they say so much when it counts, and Mike’s heart is full to bursting with how much he loves both of them.

He reaches out, hesitantly at first and then with purpose, and takes both of their hands. He laces their fingers together—Will on his right, Eleven on his left—and squeezes their hands.

And, without saying anything at all, they both squeeze back.


End file.
